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Select committee chairs used to be Westminster's booby prize. Now they are the best audition stage in politics — a place where forensic questioning, a well-timed interim report and a 40-second clip can do more for a career than a decade of private lunches.
The meetings are for the diary; the chats are for the decisions. A guide to the WhatsApp tiers that now run Westminster, from the SpAd bunker to the constituency onion — and why a leaked screenshot travels faster than any bad broadcast round.
In Westminster, the table matters more than the menu. From the 12:15 by the door to the corner banquette with a clear sightline of the room, lunch is where access is performed, alliances are refreshed and careers are quietly marked up or down.
Every fiscal event has a soundtrack, and this year's has been remastered from a 2010 master tape. We compare the phrasebook of austerity past with the vocabulary of consolidation present — and find rather more shared DNA than the Treasury would care to admit.
Before the Chancellor stands up, the real Autumn Statement is already being briefed in the foyers, WhatsApp groups and select committee diaries of Westminster. Here are seven tells that separate a genuine fiscal rabbit from a Treasury decoy.